Something from Nothing

As we interviewed a 97-year-old old Jewish man by the name of Ben Badiner, he told us his story starting from the very beginning of his life. Ben has lived in the Twin Cities all his life but shortly before he was born his parents immigrated to the United States from Russia with many other Jewish families. They believed this was a good place to raise a family and was an area that encouraged a better life. As the story continues, Ben tells us of the jewelry store his father started and how it remained in business and in the family for 80 years. It was a local jewelry store that prospered greatly and was extremely popular until its close in 2008. Throughout the interview Ben was able to share with us some memories, some family history, and how the jewelry store influenced his life.

We all got along good

My name is Ben Badiner and I was born on July 24, 1918. My parents immigrated here from Russia before I was born, so I have lived here all my life. When I was a kid me and my family lived in a neighborhood in North Minneapolis. I am a Jew so as a kid there was some [discrimination] but we all got along good but there was an undercurrent of discrimination. There were black kids and people of different religions, we all got along good. There was no knives or guns even if someone was a rough character they would get in a fist fight with them but that’s all. Nobody got killed, there wasn’t so many killings and the only killings was gangsters themselves. It was more adult gangsters not the kids. There wasn’t too much little kids on the street like there is nowadays, without parents or they don’t know who their parents are. It was tough times financially to begin with. Umm I remember, well…. I lived, on the corner, I lived on 1211 Irving and next door there were some uh, Swedish people and further down the block were some colored people, black people, and we all got along good. All the Jews lived in North Minneapolis and everybody knew everyone. If you weren’t related to someone then one of your friends were and everybody watched out for everybody else. But the people next door, their name was Nelson, I remember they didn’t have any children but come Christmas time we would go and, my folks, myself and my brothers, we would go over to their house and exchange Christmas presents and then when we had Hanukkah we would do the same. They would come over to our house so we exchanged both holidays.

My journey through school

I went to Grant [Elementary] School, which was on Gerrard. Gerrard and uh, and 11th, Grant’s not there anymore. And we used to, we used to, when we lived on Irving, in grade school, I walked through somebody’s yard across the streets, Irving, Humbled, and Gerrard, because there were no busses. Sometimes we brought our lunch. And I went to Lincoln Junior High on Penn Avenue. And I finished at North High. And the classes were so big at North that they used to have a January graduation and a June graduation -- I graduated in June 1936. The classes were so big they just had to like move kids through and stuff. It was huge. There were gangs at North. There was a couple good football players, but I wasn’t good at football. I played hockey. I played hockey and baseball. We used to play football at North Commons and from Northeast they’d come over, I think from Edison High School. That was a High School at Northeast. And eventually sometimes there was a different nationalities: Polish people, Jewish people, Italians and they’d play at North Commons football on just a hard surface, hardly any grass at all, so we were pretty tough, pretty tough kids. I used to like to box but I remember once I got hit, you always take a hit when you’re boxing, but I got hit once in the ribs and that finished me off. That taught me to behave myself. I was lucky enough to graduate high school unlike many of my friends who had to drop out due to the Great Depression.

How I kept occupied

During school on 12th and Irving we moved up to 1241 Vincent, on the corner of Vincent and Plymouth, it’s about a block from Theodore Wirth golf club. In North Minneapolis the main drag was Plymouth Avenue or Golden Valley Road and Plymouth was the same as 13th and the beginning of Plymouth Avenue is this beautiful Theodore Wirth golf course so if you follow the chain of lakes and go from Lake Harriet to Isles and Cedar you go up north then you get up to where the golf course is. It’s beautiful and it’s been there for a long long time. It was golfing and you could ski down great big ski hills. I used to ski jump, I was about 17 years old.  Maybe I landed on my head one time. Anyways, so that’s where the streetcar line was, it started on Plymouth and goes up to Sheridan. We’d take the streetcar and we’d go to Emerson Avenue and transfer. The streetcar is on tracks. It followed tracks and it was hooked to something electric overhead. That’s how it ran, on the electricity. So it wouldn’t go all over like the bus it would just go back and forth. The streetcar was a pretty big deal. And then the Homewood Theatre was a big deal. What we used to do, on Newton and Plymouth there was a Homewood Theatre. One person would buy a ticket and about four or five of us, the other guys would sneak in the side doors. It was ten cents to go to the movie.  A lot of these movies have the exit doors ya know on the side so that’s where we would sneak in. And when the owner had to announce that he was raising the price to 15 cents everyone started stomping their feet because they were mad. Like, I remember once, I must have been 16 years old and that was the evening, guys went to the movie. I got a pipe for a quarter and some tobacco, and I got so sick to my stomach from it, that I didn’t smoke all my life. I never smoked a cigarette in my life. So it was a good thing it happened.

The start of it all

I would go to school then go to the store and work for my dad. He had opened a store. He started with nothing when he came here from Russia and decided he wanted to make something of himself, so he opened a store. He would go to the wholesale jewelry store and get the stuff on consignment and when he sold that jewelry he would pay [the wholesale shop]. He would go to bars and grocery stores and the great northern market, a lot of people worked there. There was the 620 club my dad used to go and he used to take me there once in awhile he called it where turkey is king. It was on Hennepin between 6th and 7th. In the 620 club they had a place called the round table in that all these guys used to meet. I just sat outside the table, just nearby and one fella could be a gangster and one could be a judge, a veteran. One was a regular judge and one just got out of jail so they all knew each other for what they were and was interesting to listen to some of their stories and then after my dad then he started at 6th and Hennepin, he started the jewelry store and again I started to work their when I was 15 and he started a few years before that. [My dad] he used to buy closeouts, he bought some raincoats, but it didn’t rain that season. [If there was a good deal he would buy it] and try to resell it.

I learned from my father to be nice to everybody

We went on and my dad was a type of a man, which I learned from him, to be nice to everybody and also if there is somebody who you really aren’t fond of too much, just don’t say anything about them. In fact, this one lady always said, “You say nice things about everybody.” I said, “Well I believe in that.” I worked since, well like I told ya he bought closeouts and he had a little store in North Minneapolis, Morgan and Plymouth and then he went on. Well I worked in the store from 15 years old to 90, I worked 75 years. My sister passed away when she was 42 and then my brother he’s a wonderful brother and he worked in the store too at that time. It was at 7th street not too far from the Radisson Hotel across the street. First we called it David’s because that was my dad’s first name. We moved from Hennepin to 7th street. We had to transition so the first store we called it David’s, and then we went on and changed the name to Badiner Jewelers on 7th. My main job at the store was selling and buying merchandise with my dad and brother. And yeah, I lived in North Minneapolis, I never knew where St. Louis Park was until I was about 15 or 16. I never had a bike my dad thought it would be too dangerous to ride a bike. He said pretty soon you will have a car. I think I drove a car when I was about 13. The car was safer than the bike. My brother Alvin went into the advertising business and at that time my son came in and later my grandson came in. We’ve been treating people right and we discounted jewelry. Even today when I was having lunch downstairs, apparently this happens often, a lady showed me her ring. She said, “I bought my ring from you about 50 years ago.” So, I thank them. I tell them, “You helped pay the rent.” We didn’t advertise a lot.We finally ended up in the IDS building on the Nicollet Mall. I enjoyed North Minneapolis there was no knives or guns. As far as people getting in scratches it was just people getting in physical fights and there were all different kinds of races and nationalities and no guns or knives. Everybody got along and then later on when I got married and my wife came in the store working. She passed away 7 years ago. My dad was a very generous man he was the kind of guy in the Depression if somebody needed some money, [if] he didn’t have it he would go borrow it for this fella that needed it, he would borrow it from somebody else and pay him back.

I knew she was my girl

Me and my wife, Anita, we met on a blind date. I had, I had a date, uh, with another, a waitress at the 620 club, and then, I used to go in there every once in awhile and have a drink, so. And then I guess a friend of mine, he picks me up with my wife Anita, his lady friend knew her and I knew right away when we went out that it was gonna be Anita. In fact, that’s the only lady I ever went steady with. So I knew. So we got engaged and then we were married over sixty years. The only time Anita would get mad at me was at the store. If a person came in the store to buy something and they couldn’t make up their mind to take it, it was either for their wife or girlfriend, I would say “Well, take it home over the weekend, take the watch home” and he’ll come back Monday and either pay me or return it. And that would be a total stranger that I didn’t even know but I usually had a knack of sizing up people and my wife, when they would walk out of the store, my wife would ball me out, but in a nice way. “How could you trust that person when you’ve never even saw them before?” she’d say. I said, “They look honest” and it worked out okay. Now ya know, it usually worked out okay because now ya know it worked out okay because the only people that sometimes didn’t pay me were the ones I knew. Then I had to look them down. Everywhere I go people will come up to me, I can’t always make out who they are, but they’ll come up to me because I look the same for like the last 50 years, and they will recognize me and come up to me because I always had an old look and they will show me all the different things they bought from the store. Just today there were even two people at lunch who did that. Especially here where it’s mostly all Jewish people who live here in this building, they know me and that they got rings from me for their kids because it used to be just almost the only place to go. My dad opened the store in 1928 and it was there up until 2008. Like I said, even today, I think there was two women said they bought their rings from me.

Images:

1. Badiner, Ben. Link: Here Store Advertisement. Ben worked at Badiner jewelers for 75 years and ran the store after his father passed away. He put his heart and soul into the store and his customers who always made sure to point out the kindness of Ben and his family.

2. Badiner, Ben. Family Photograph. This is a picture of Ben at his 75th high school reunion from North High School. At age 97 he is one of two classmates still alive.

Story Facilitators: 

Taylor Helton, Taylor Gaveske, Sydney Maloney